Quit Your Worrying! eBook

There are those who worry about the “gentility”
of others. I remember when Charles Wagner, the
author of The Simple Life, was in this country.
We were dining at the home of a friend and one of these
super-sensitive, finical sticklers for gentility was
present. Wagner was speaking in his big, these
super-sensitive, finical sticklers for gentility simple,
primitive way of a man brought up as a peasant, and
more concerned about what he was thinking than whether
his “table manners” conformed to the latest
standard. There was some gravy on his plate.
He wanted it. He took a piece of bread and used
it as a sop, and then, impaling the gravy-soaked bread
on his fork, he conveyed it to his mouth with gusto
and relish. My “genteel” friend commented
upon it afterwards as “disgusting,” and
lost all interest in the man and his work as a consequence.

To my mind, the criticism was that of a fool.

John Muir, the eminent poet-naturalist of the Mountains
of California, had a habit at the table of “crumming”
his bread—­that is, toying with it, until
it crumbled to pieces in his hand. He would,
at the same time, be sending out a steady stream of
the most entertaining, interesting, fascinating, and
instructive lore about birds and beasts, trees and
flowers, glaciers and rocks, that one ever listened
to. In his mental occupancy, he knew not whether
he was eating his soup with a fork or an ice-cream
spoon—­and cares less. Neither did
any one else with brains and an awakened mind that
soared above mere conventional manners. And yet
I once had an Eastern woman of great wealth, (recently
acquired), and of great pretensions to social “manners,”
at whose table Muir had eaten, inform me that she
regarded him as a rude boor, because, forsooth, he
was unmindful of these trivial and unimportant conventions
when engaged in conversation.

Now, neither Wagner nor Muir would justify any advocacy
on my part of neglect of true consideration, courtesy,
or good manners. But where is the “lack
of breeding” in sopping up gravy with a piece
of bread or “crumming,” or eating soup
with a spoon of one shape or another? These are
purely arbitrary rules, laid down by people who have
more time than sense, money than brains, and who,
as I have elsewhere remarked, are far more anxious
to preserve the barand unimportant conventions when
engaged in conive realization of the biblical idea
of the “brotherhood of man.”

CHAPTER XIX

THE WORRIES OF JEALOUSY

A prolific source of worry is jealousy; not only the
jealousy that exists between men and women, but that
exists between women and women, and between men and
men. There are a thousand forms that this hideous
monster of evil assumes, and when they have been catalogued
and classified, another thousand will be found awaiting,
around the corner, of entirely different categories.
But all alike they have one definite origin, one source,